This one-of-a-kind robot is an exobiology extant life surveyor (EELS) developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
, the team recently conducted Earth analog tests of the robot inside Canada's Athabasca glacier and Mount Meager volcano. This was the first step in analyzing the robot's resilience and navigation capabilities through rugged terrain and further refining the ultimate mission's design.The EELS initiative comes in the backdrop of discoveries made by the Cassini probe, which explored Saturn, its rings, and moons for nearly 13 years.
“These crevasse envelopes have driven every aspect of the EELS architecture to make it adaptable to the challenges it may face on this journey from the surface to the ocean. The adaptability of the system opens other destinations such as Martian polar caps, and descending crevasses in ice sheets on Earth,” explained NASA.
Furthermore, it could help future astronauts likely to establish an Artemis base camp during the upcoming missions. It can easily penetrate the moon's lava tubes or craters and determine where and how much water is trapped on the lunar surface. These remote locations are difficult to reach, but this snake robot can efficiently function and return a wealth of data to Earth.
The NASA team is currently working on completing refinements to the EELS robot. If everything goes as planned, there's a chance we'll see a snake slithering through the icy surface of Saturn's moon. Nonetheless, several unknowns must be addressed before this science-fiction concept can become a reality.
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